Reviews

This must be the most precisely edited movie ever made. No establishing shots, no transitions, no narration, none of those flying-calendar-page tricks. The action starts on the first frame and ends on the last frame, and never stops anywhere between.

The DA, out for the blood of grafters, goes on the radio naming a handful of prominent people he believes are top corrupting criminals in the city. He's going to indict one of them in his latest case, the 13th, tomorrow. Needless to say, he's murdered that night. As is often the case in 1930s and '40s mysteries, newspapermen do the sleuthing.

This nicely paced mystery is easy to solve if you've seen enough of them. There are many here at IA. There's good banter early on, but I had trouble in discerning some of it. Some was too anachronistic for me. Of the mysteries that I've seen, I believe this was the first one in which a newspaper man is killed during an investigation. When a good guy was murdered, it's always been a cop or a private detective.

Fast-paced, formula murder mystery with its main attraction being leading man Weldon Heyburn's awful Clark Gabel imitation. Unimaginative and at times incompetent direction does nothing to help the predictable plot. (If you haven't figured out who the killer is by minute 36, turn in your junior G-man badge.) The competent actors Selmer Jackson, Milburn Stone and Robert Homans are trapped onboard.

The soft but otherwise good print is missing eleven minutes (TV edit?), which include the title card and all credits. Except for one brief dropout the audio is okay.

A very delightful movie! The plot is good, the acting average to above,and it has a good pace. One of the better movies of the latter 1930's on the Internet Archive. Well worth watching. Weldon Heyburn did well as the lead actor as did Milburn Stone as the second male lead. Inez Courtney was perfect in her role.